


spring will come

by LadyCharity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Brotherly Angst, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Jane feels, Loki Feels, Strained Relationships, Tragedy, Tragedy: Death of a Brother, grudging in-law relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if grieving over the death of her husband wasn't hard enough, Jane has to deal with Thor's angry, bitter, emotionally shot little brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spring will come

**Author's Note:**

> This work was used sort of for my personal need to process some things in life. Modern AU of Thor, in which characters really need a slap and a hug.

Somehow, when the phone rang the morning after Thor was filed as missing, Jane knew. 

She listened very calmly to the voice on the other end—it may only take a couple minutes, if she wouldn’t mind but wait for the police car to come pick her up—and sat at the foyer to wait. She canceled her lecture she was supposed to give on the theory of Einsten-Rosen bridges to the nearby university, and when they asked why she said she was ill. She felt nothing, thought nothing, and let her senses be filled with static. They might be wrong. There were many blond, tall men in this city with a cheery smile. And there was only one of her Thor. 

She said nothing when the police rang the doorbell to fetch her. Nodded once when they greeted her with soft, empathetic voices, wordlessly following them to the car. 

The drive was only two minutes. The park was so close to home—she and Thor used to walk through it all the time, during the autumn when the leaves were gold and ruby. He could have made it back in just a thirty minute walk.

They took her deep into the park, far from the trail that Thor and she used to trek. She felt cold. She tried to breathe steadily, because she had to tell herself that they were wrong, they’ve got the wrong person. She’ll go home after this, relieved and puzzled after this mix-up, and Thor will be at home, perfectly all right, and she’d tell him how the police tried to call her because they thought she needed to see this and he would laugh and put his strong arm around her shoulders and she would feel how very  _here_  he was. 

"Over there, please," the officer said. 

Jane wrapped her arms around herself like she can make her own blanket. It was very cold for October, cold enough to snow. Thor had left the house two days ago with nothing but a scarf and his pea coat that she forced over her shoulders. Took them with a laugh and a kiss to her temple and said, “I’ll be back around nine or ten.”

He must be very cold now. She couldn’t remember if he brought his gloves.

They took her to the large tree taped off by police caution tape. She dug her nails into her skin. They lifted the tape above her head for her to pass through. 

The body was bashed in the head, and shoved into where the roots had caved the ground in. The eyes were sunken in and rolled back, and the jaw looked like it was hanging on only one functioning hinge. His fingers were still curled, frozen like fossils. 

It still only took her one glance, and she released her breath.

"That’s him," she said. "That’s my Thor."

She turned away, took several steps, and vomited.

-

Erik was with her when she tried to make the phone call to Thor’s parents. She had dialed their number four times, each time she set the phone back into the receiver before the first ring, dry heaving and doubled over while Erik held her tight. 

The fifth time, she lay down on the couch while Erik called them for her. He was practically her father. They wouldn’t be receiving bad news from a stranger.

"…found in the park this morning…don’t know what happened…I’m so sorry, Mrs. Odinson…"

She buried her face into the throw blanket. It was hitting her, again and again, that Thor wasn’t going to come back home. 

There was a dry click when Erik set the phone back to the receiver. She didn’t lift her head as she heard him sit down on the couch next to her and put a hand to her shoulders. She cried enough. Now she was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. 

“They want to come over,” he said.

She said nothing. She only stared at the blank television screen. She remembered how Thor was looking forward to the next episode of his favorite television series, because the last ended in a cliffhanger. She couldn’t understand why such an arbitrary thought came to her mind.

"Would you like me to stay the night?" he said.

She nodded. He rubbed her back soothingly, then stood up to cook for her. She breathed in the woolen thickness of the blanket. It smelled like Thor, still. 

“It’s cold,” said Erik. “Do you mind if I turn up the heat?”

“Go ahead,” she said, except she said it so quietly Erik could not hear. The wind was howling outside, dropping air by several degrees. She could feel its cold touch even inside, and wondered if Thor was cold when he was walking back.

"Should we tell him, too?" said Erik from the kitchen.

Jane turned toward him. She couldn’t see him from the living room.

"Who?" she said.

"Loki," said Erik. "Thor’s brother. Is someone going to tell him?"

Jane felt her stomach sink, sink, sink. 

"I can’t do it, Erik," she said. "I can’t—no, I can’t call him. His parents will do it. He’d rather hear it from them than from me." 

"Jane—"

"He  _hates_ me,” she said. “He’s always hated me. I can’t call him and tell him his big brother—tell him that Thor—” 

She choked on the truth. Just the thought of calling Loki—not even speaking with him face to face—made her blood run so cold she might as well be just as dead as Thor, except she wasn’t because Thor’s blood spilt out of his head when a bastard bashed his head in with a rock and ran off with his wallet and coat. 

She couldn’t talk to Loki. Couldn’t face him. She hadn’t had a civil conversation with him since her wedding day four years ago. She couldn’t break the silent streak with  _this_. 

"His parents will tell him," Jane said, her voice shaking. "He’d rather hear it from them than from me."

Except Thor used to say that Loki had tension between him and their parents as well. There was no one that could get through to Loki, who could enter his dark, secluded cave of himself and come out unscathed. No one except Thor. 

But Thor was dead, and Jane wanted to drown in her blanket and never come out.

-

The moment Jane spotted Loki in the church, her throat tightened. 

She had stayed by Thor’s coffin for two hours now, tracing his sharp knuckles. The morgue had adjusted his abused face to keep the casket open, but she couldn’t bear to look at it. It wasn’t Thor lying on that satin. It was a stranger, a doll, carved wax. Not her husband. 

But she looked back, and saw him.

Loki was in the back of the room, leaning against the wall as if he had been there for a long time. He might have, for all Jane knew. She had been kneeling in front of Thor’s coffin all this time, and the whispers of sympathies and apologies that people spoke to her as they came to say goodbye to Thor (not-Thor) blended into white noise as she held onto Thor’s cold hand as if he was chilled and she was trying to warm him up again. 

Their eyes met, for a second. She froze. He looked away. 

She waited for him to come view the casket, but he stayed where he was, leaning against the doorway with one shoulder, ankles crossed, as if he was merely observing a cocktail party instead of his brother’s calling hours. 

A strong-voiced part of her said to her, let him be. If he doesn’t move from his place, fine. He probably doesn’t want to see Thor while Jane was around, and Jane wasn’t about to move away.

A whisper said, that’s his brother. He’s only twenty-five and that’s his big  _brother_  who once played pirates with him when they were little and defended him from bullies lying dead in a box with a bashed-in head. 

Slowly, she stood up, unhooking her fingers from Thor’s. As she walked away, others filled her place by Thor’s side. Thor had so many loved ones, to the point that it was jarring how few of them she recognized because there were just  _so many_. So many who lost someone. 

When she approached Loki, he didn’t acknowledge her. Just looked at his wristwatch as if he was waiting for this all to be over. She sucked in her breath, trying to not be afraid of him. But hell, she was afraid of him. 

"Hi, Loki," she said. Her voice was croaking, quiet, and nothing worth presenting.

Loki’s bottom jaw twitched. He raised his sharp green eyes to her and she could feel him analyzing every flaw, every mistake on her, digging his dagger judgment into her skin. 

"How are you?" she said. 

"Small talk is clearly still not your forte," Loki said.

Jane clenched her teeth. They might as well be at a New Year’s party, and her attempt to flirtation failing, except it was none of that, it was her husband’s funeral because someone thought it was all right to kill him.

"Have you been here long?" she said. 

"Hm," Loki said. He checked his wristwatch again. "Too long, evidently."

The glance he gave her clearly communicated that she was souring his stay. Normally, when Loki spoke daggers to Jane, Thor would put his hand on her shoulders and speak some firm, straightforward defense against Loki, and Loki would frown but discontinue. Jane thought she could still feel his hand print on her back.

"You haven’t…" She gestured to the casket, trying to not speak as much or else show how much she was stuttering. "Won’t you come in?"

"And do what?" Loki said. "Watch a body rot in its box? I don’t need traditional sentiment to get me by, like others."

Jane took in a breath, trying not to fight. Thor wouldn’t like it if she snapped at him. Not my two favorite people, he used to say with a sad sigh when Jane broke into a frustrated rant about Loki when said little brother was dropping by before Christmas. And she would stop, and try to remember that Loki was someone Thor would unquestioningly give his life up for, and how could she be angry at someone who Thor loved so much?

Besides, she was far too tired. 

"I mean," she said, "you’re here."

Loki said nothing. Jane shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She wanted to go back and hold Thor’s hand, even though Thor wasn’t there to feel it. She wanted to hold on, because she wasn’t done saying goodbye, and she never will be until she too was gone and dead. She only had four years of saying hello morning after morning, after all.

"Thor would like you to say goodbye," Jane said quietly.

"Thor’s dead," Loki said. He raised his voice just enough so that it reached the stained glass windows on either side of them. "It’s already too late for that."

Jane’s heart sank. She wanted to snap at Loki for being so damn brash, for being so uncaring that Thor was dead, for telling the truth after having such a reputation of being a liar. Instead, she turned away and walked back to the casket (Thor), knelt by the coffin, and held his hand again. 

She still felt every callous, every still vein. She wanted to kiss each knuckle.

The stream of white noise, of ‘I’m so sorry’s, picked up their pace, and she could hear none of them. Sometimes she felt fingers brush her shoulder, sometimes saw a hand reach out to touch Thor, as if to assure themselves that he really wasn’t there, that he wouldn’t burst into a fit of laughter if they just poked him in the right spot. He was still, and dead, and gone. 

If Loki was one of those hands, one of those voices, that pressing presence she felt behind her back but could not bear to look back to, Jane didn’t know. Only that when Erik put a hand to her shoulder and whispered, ‘It’s time to go,’ and she stood up, Loki was no longer there.

-

"Black suits you," Loki said to Jane after the funeral.

She said nothing. She wanted to slap him. Wanted to tell him that black made him look like a vampire, and not the charming literary ones but the ones that made people grimace and thank  _goodness_  they couldn’t see their reflection because they were just too ghastly to stand.

But she didn’t. Because she saw how his arm shook as he carried the left corner of Thor’s casket, even though it wasn’t so heavy. Saw how he turned on his heel and left before he could be handed a small palmful of dust to throw onto the coffin. Saw him pace in the parking lot, head bowed, hands shoved into pockets, and she could have sworn she could  _hear_ him gasping for breath. 

She tore off her veil, her black dress, the high-heeled close-toed shoes that pinched her feet, the moment she was in her own home. Threw on one of Thor’s shirts and her sweatpants. It almost made the day feel normal, except the flat was strewn with flowers and sympathy cards and tureens of comfort food as if that was enough to cover up the hole that Thor left behind. 

"For you," Loki had said after the funeral, handing her a calla lily. It had a single lip, and was so solitary compared to the carnations. "My sympathies for your loss."

And Jane didn’t know if she should take Loki by the shoulders and  _shake him_ , because she could taste the bitterness dripping down from his lips, feel the barbed accusation in his gaze that demanded, why give you the apologies? Why give you the sympathies, the cards, the flowers? You didn’t lose just a husband. People lost a best friend, a son, a coworker, a teacher. I lost a brother.

But he would never say that, and she didn’t want to confirm it. 

Thor’s mug was still where he left it the day he had gone. Coffee rings still marking where the espresso nearly touched the rim, collected in an evaporated stain at the bottom because he had to run out before he could put it through the wash and he promised he could wash it himself, so please don’t worry about it. 

She picked it up. It was reluctant to budge from the kitchen table, a coffee ring left behind like fairy rings marking ghosts in the wild. Telling of a once-past existence of a fantasy, of something she couldn’t see anymore. 

"They say you identified the body," Loki had said, and she told him that was true, and wanted to say nothing else. The way his lips curled wryly made her hold her breath, waiting for his poison. 

(She knew what Thor wore that day, whether he was shaven clean or left a five o’clock shadow dusted on his chin, what he packed for lunch and what tune he whistled as he walked out the door. Loki knew the way Thor’s forehead would crease when he narrowed his eyes, could recognize his cough even if they were in a crowded room and Loki had his back turned toward Thor ten feet away, except Thor would be too dead to cough if Loki tried to listen for it)

Thor’s parents were at the flat today, because she had none and they didn’t want to go back and hold each other’s hands and look each other in the eye and remind themselves that their eldest child was dead. She wondered if they had invited Loki, even if he wouldn’t come. If Loki had anyone staying with him at all.

"He was a damn fool," Loki had said, and Jane couldn’t leave him and his poisonous words no matter how much she didn’t want to listen, because truthfully, she did. "If he would have paid attention to his surroundings, he wouldn’t have—"

And then, “Did they catch that damn bastard yet?”

Jane cried again—she couldn’t help it. Frigga stroked her hair as she cried, unabashedly, not bothering to hide her face in anything. She still could see Thor’s crushed face in the dirt. Her Thor had been hurt, had been beaten, had been murdered, and he deserved none of that, and yet it all happened. Then Frigga too cried and Jane wrapped her arms around her, letting her tears soak into the shoulder of Thor’s sweater. 

She didn’t know why she wondered, but she realized she never saw Loki cry once yet. 

"Will you get back home safely?" she had asked right before Loki refused to take the black cars back home, and would rather walk the several miles in a black suit and dress shoes in the October chill. 

"Don’t keep up the pretense," said Loki. He didn’t look at her. "Death did us apart too." 

And as much as it didn’t make sense, it did, because if there was no Thor, how was Loki her brother-in-law?

Part of her thought she could be relieved, because she did not have to deal with Loki anymore, deal with his bitterness and resentment and sarcasm and hurtful words. 

Part of her realized, if there was no Thor, and there was no her, who would care for him at all?

At night she couldn’t sleep in her own bed when it was so empty. She lay on the couch with a sleeping bag. The lamps were all on, as if it was daytime in midnight. It was so quiet, and even when she turned up the heat it was cold. 

She remembered how Thor would talk in his sleep, and her nose stung. 

"Loki—" she had said, and he turned on his heel and left. She decided not to forget how she noticed how his lips trembled when he spoke.  

-

When Thor’s murderer was arrested and set for trial exactly seven weeks after Thor’s funeral, Jane drove to the cemetery. 

It was the first time she went there since they had buried Thor there. She had enough reminders at home—from his toothbrush still in the bathroom rinsing cups to the fifth wedding anniversary gift of two tickets to a tour trip to see the Northern Lights in Norway he must have planned to give her in the coming January, which she found deep within his sock drawer and had to sit down for a while when she did—that Thor was dead and gone and not with her. She didn’t need a gravestone to emphasize that.

It was November now, and chilled. A thin layer of slushy snow covered the sidewalk, and the grass was dead and curled up in the rock-hard soil. Thor’s grave looked so cold, and for a wild moment Jane wanted to pull off her coat and drape it over the mound, except Thor was dead and couldn’t feel that, and she was never a believer in symbolism.

She knelt next to the gravestone, just enough so that she wouldn’t be able to see his name and his far too close life and death date on the rock. And sat.

She tried to say something, anything, because Thor was always an extrovert and loved the sound of people talking, but she had been so silent for this past month that she had run dry. 

Maybe he really wasn’t down there still. Maybe after the funeral someone secretly dug him back out to dispose of him elsewhere and these were all just memorials, stone trees planted that wouldn’t grow because they were all so adamant to make sure that death did not beget life.

Maybe he really wasn’t dead.

"Hi, Thor," Jane said softly. 

And that was all she could get out of herself, because Thor has no ears, and if he could hear it certainly wouldn’t have to be at his gravestone, as if he was only sleeping six feet under and not gone. She closed her eyes, breathing in the cold November winter. 

Fall had passed too soon—she hadn’t had a chance to see the park they once frequented, in its autumn glory. She had nightmares of it, instead.

(“Graves are the scars of the earth,” she once said to Thor)

There was a crunch of snow. Her eyes snapped open and she looked up. She tried not to gasp. 

"Oh," said Loki.

He was wrapped in a trenchcoat that overwhelmed him; even his scarf that he was always so fond of, or so Thor once said, looked more like a noose. He lost weight—a tremendous amount, and barely left footsteps in the sleet, but whatever starved look he had only made his poison against her even more fatal.

"Loki," she said. 

She waited with bated breath for him to say something else. Thor, with his airless, lungless lungs, held his breath for it as well.

(“I got into another fight with Loki today,” Thor had said quietly, when the dishes were washed and they sat on the couch, and he had come back home that day so forlorn and frustrated. 

"About me again?" she said, and when he nodded she said, "What did he say?" 

He told her, how Loki accused Jane of changing Thor for the worse, how he said she was not good enough for Thor, too weak, too immature—how Thor fought back screaming, defending Jane, snapping back at Loki, how Loki hissed and Thor growled, and her heart sank deeper and deeper because she didn’t know what she was doing  _wrong_ , she was loving Thor and how was she doing it  _wrong,_ what had she done to Loki to receive his antagonism, what was she doing wrong?)

"Don’t tell me," he said, "you’re clinging to sentiment." 

His words were icicles—weapons that hurt her badly and then melted too quickly for her to have any proof. She maintained her composure, and her place next to Thor’s grave.

"This is my first time here on my own," she said.

"Who would you possibly come with?" he said.

"You, maybe?" she said. 

It was a daring gesture, and he snorted in response. She looked away, tracing the edge of the gravestone with her gloved finger. She could never talk back to him. She knew what she would want to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say them. She didn’t want to make icicles out of her words.

"I heard they caught the bastard," said Loki.

"Mm," said Jane.

"Took their damn time," said Loki. 

Jane realized that despite the willow trees and dead things all around them, Thor’s grave was clean of autumn leaves. She turned her gaze back to Loki.

"Is that why you’re here too?" she said.

"What?" said Loki.

"They caught—him," said Jane. "We don’t have to worry about him running around free anymore."

There’s closure, she almost said, except she didn’t because that wasn’t true, she still felt lost and empty and she still slept in a sleeping bag in the living room. 

"You’re stupid," said Loki. "That doesn’t change any fact that Thor is dead. Why would I be drawn to useless displays of affection?"

"You’ve been here before, haven’t you?" said Jane. "His grave is clean."

"No thanks to you," Loki said.

It took him a second after admitting to realize what he said, and fell back into stone silence. She swallowed hard; her lips felt dry and crackled.

"And you’re here now," she said.

Loki scuffed the dirt off his shoes. They were stained from the salt residue used to melt the ice off the road—very unlike the normally meticulous care Loki gave to everything he owned, or himself. The shadows under his eyes were ghostly.

"Did you want time alone?" Jane said.

"To what?" said Loki. "Talk to a couple of earthworms? I don’t need that kind of emotional sustenance unlike you."

She wished she could say, why are you so  _mean_  to me? except she didn’t, because he was Thor’s little brother still even if there was no Thor to be a brother to anymore, and Thor always winced when she talked angrily of him. She couldn’t have Thor turning in his grave when she was right beside it. 

"Then what are you doing here?" said Jane.

Loki’s bottom jaw twitched. He tugged at his worn gloves, as if he was bored. They didn’t seem to fit his slim hands right. They looked like they would have once belonged to Thor, considering the worn fingers and the small hole at the thumb. 

"You walked here, didn’t you?" Jane said. "The bottom of your trousers are damp."

"Astute," said Loki.

"Do you need a ride back?" she said, even though the idea of being alone in a car with Loki—her car, even—was daunting. But she couldn’t just leave him in the cold and self-denial. 

"Not from you," Loki said. 

"Look—" She stood up, fury bubbling in her chest, but she forced itself down. They were right next to Thor’s grave, after all—it was almost blasphemous to fight right here where Thor rested and he had no way to pull them apart. Loki raised an eyebrow, goading her. She swallowed hard and lowered her voice.

"You might as well," she said. "I haven’t seen you since…for a while."

"What reason have you?" said Loki. "We may as well be strangers." 

"We’ve known each other for maybe seven years, Loki," Jane said, her voice steely. 

"Seven years too long," Loki said under his breath, his words in the form of cold steam.

Jane clenched her teeth. She wished it was too cold, so that she would be too numb for those words to hurt. 

"If you want a ride, just come, then," she said, trudging away from Thor’s grave toward the parking lot. Loki didn’t follow her at first, and she felt a sense of relief, until the  _crunch-crunch_  of sleet echoed her own footsteps. 

“So are you coming?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Where are you going, then?” she said. She unlocked her car door and wrenched it open. “Your home is east from here.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe the prison.”

Realization clicked in her mind, and she slammed her car door shut.

"Don’t," she said.

"Why not?" he said.

"You’re just going to see that—that man," said Jane. She swallowed hard, hands balmy in her mittens. "You’re going to see him yourself—to do what? How is that going to help you?"

"Don’t pretend you know what’s right or not right for me," said Loki. 

"So you can do what? Look him in the eyes and say—what?" said Jane. "I hate you? I forgive you? I hope you get capital punishment?"

"I’ll do what I need to do, and that has nothing to do with you," said Loki. 

"It does if I’m driving you there," said Jane. She shook her head, trying to catch her breath, trying to remember that this was Loki she was talking to, this was Thor’s little brother, and he would be so sad if she yelled. "Just—look, let’s talk. Let’s catch up. I’ll take you to my place. We’ll—we’ll have dinner or something. I don’t know." She was digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole with every syllable. 

"What for?" said Loki.

"Because it’s been a while," Jane said quickly, to cover up the fact that she had no actual response.

"We have nothing to do with each other," Loki said. His eyes were sharp and angry. "You don’t have to pretend that you’re still my sister-in-law."

"Are you trying to force us out of each other’s lives, period?" said Jane.

"What point is there?" They were in the cold, but his words were like breathing fire, because she felt it burn. "Why do I have to pretend I have anything to do with—with  _you_ —or that damn house of his—that home that has nothing to do with me, to do with  _our_  family?”

"Why can’t you?" Jane said.

"You aren't family," Loki said. "You try so damn hard, but you're  _not_."

"So that's why you treat me like crap all the time?" said Jane. 

Her eyes burned with frustrated tears, because she was so tired of being hated, being yelled at, being angry at, and she just didn’t know what she was doing wrong, and she couldn’t control herself anymore.

"You keep  _hurting_ me, Loki!" Jane said, her voice rising without her control. "Every single time I try to talk to you, try to reach out to you, you keep hating me and hurting me and I’m tired of it. You keep saying terrible things about me behind my back, and right in front of my face, and all I want to do is just care for you and you just—you just throw it right back into my face.”

Her heart couldn’t rein back the words she was saying, because she had too much of all this rejection in the midst of becoming a widow, becoming alone in a home that she had thought she would live fifty, sixty, seventy more years with the love of her life and grow old together in, and Loki wouldn’t stop making her cry. 

"You won’t even tell me what I’m doing wrong," she said, and she was shaking even though she couldn’t feel the cold anymore. "I’m trying my hardest and you keep shutting me down and I just can’t take it anymore, all right? For God’s sake—" 

She yanked open her car door and climbed into the driver’s seat. She didn’t even know what look was on Loki’s face the whole while she shouted.

"For God’s sake—" she said, nearly sobbing, nearly snapping. "If you weren’t Thor’s little brother I wouldn’t even have tried." 

She shut the car door with a resounding thud and started the engine. Loki didn’t move, or move out of the way when she backed out of her parking space, and if she hit him in the hip with her fender then she didn’t care. She drove out of the parking lot, onto the road, away from the place she knew she shouldn’t have gone, because what else was supposed to come out of a cemetery than terrible, terrible, terrible…

Maybe Loki was right. Maybe there was no point in trying to pretend they still had anything to do with each other. Maybe it was better for the both of them to forget about each other because if there was no Thor, what did they possibly have? 

(“Not my two favorite people,” Thor said quietly, rubbing Jane’s back as she tried to swallow down the angry words about Loki she already spewed out. “I love you both so much. I wish it wasn’t this way. Not my two best friends.”)

And here Jane was, telling Loki that she would have given up on him if it wasn’t for Thor. 

She never realized how terrible those words were until she felt their aftertaste.

-

("Do you know where he had gone?" Loki asked. "When he left that day?")

Jane stomped the snow off her boots and kicked them off at the front door. It was nearing the Christmas season, and for the first time in four years she did not put decorations up. Not the tinsel or the wreath, or the mistletoe. And it was always Thor who was large enough to haul the Christmas tree into the living room. Without him, she couldn't reach the ceiling. 

She had tried taking a walk—she needed fresh air. She circled the neighborhood four times before the cold sent her running back home.

She wished she didn’t live so close to the park. The thought of it so near made her freeze in her steps as if her mind was trying to cower, recoil. Shut her down, sorry we’re closed. Come back next time.

She leafed through the envelopes she had just fetched from the mailbox. In the past two months she had been receiving a lot of mail from the bank or other polite, impersonal senders addressed to Thor, and she hadn't the heart to throw them away. Instead, she let them pile up on top of the bookshelf, as if he would soon come along to open them all himself. She knew one day, she couldn't keep this pretense up, this saving and collecting like she could piece Thor together with scraps of memorabilia. She knew one day she had to throw them away without hesitating.

Several of them were Christmas cards. Some of the lesser-remembered, lesser-known acquaintances whose Christmas cards were a Kodak moment of their glossy family in front of a fireplace with a bland message for the holidays still addressed their letter for both Thor and Jane. The dentists who wanted to build good customer relationships still sent a mass-produced card to Thor. She set them on the mantelpiece anyway.

("He had gone to work, and was meeting someone for dinner," Jane said. "I told that to the police."

"Is that it?" he said.)

Jane had a moment to herself, so she sat down and dug through the old DVDs and video cassettes on the shelf next to the television. She watched few movies; she never had the time or patience for them, but Thor enjoyed them. Most of them were his favorites--'It's a Wonderful Life,' 'The Lion King,' 'Finding Neverland'--she hadn't watched anything for a while.

There were several DVDs that Thor's mother had burned for Jane's enjoyment. Home videos, she had said with a wink while Thor protested and blushed in the background. In case you ever felt like having a good laugh, love.

Jane knew she was going to hurt, but somehow she seemed to be doing what would hurt her the most lately. She put the DVD into the player, and leaned back on the couch.

("Why are you asking me this?" Jane said.

Loki was silent on the other end of the phone. He gave a sigh, and she could almost feel the cold winter air in his breath. She knew he was walking outside again, catching his death or whatever it was he was seeking. 

"I just wanted to know," he said. "If you knew.")

Baby Thor was a waddling ball of baby fat and gold hair. She wished she watched these earlier, when she didn't have to think that this innocent, sunny, pure child that would grow up to love her with all his heart would end up killed on his way home one night. 

Frigga in the video swept Thor off his high chair and kissed him endlessly on the round cheeks. Jane's heart ached. She remembered how excited Thor was at the prospect of being a father, but Jane wanted to wait. And now she had no family with Thor left.

Thor was singing a simple childhood nursery rhyme while bashing a plastic hammer on the cut-out shapes in the box. 

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine_

_You make me happy when skies are grey_

_You'll never know dear, how much I love you_

_Please don't take my sunshine away…_

Jane closed her eyes.

("Why?" Jane said.

"Mm," was all that Loki said, before he turned and walked away without saying goodbye.)

"Whose is this, Thor?" Frigga, holding the camcorder, said to a five-year-old Thor. She was waving the same plastic hammer in front of Thor's face as he sucked on his fist. "Whose toy is this?"

"Mine!" Thor said, grinning cheekily at the camera. Jane laughed softly.

"And whose is this?" Frigga held up a dainty porcelain cup that she must have taken from the table.

"Yours," Thor said, nodding. He padded around the living room, the floor strewn with his toys.

"What about this?" Frigga held up a plastic, slightly deflated ball.

"Mine!"

"And this?"

"Yours!"

There was a soft wail in the video. Thor turned around and gave a cry of laughter before running outward. The camera followed him, and to Jane's surprise, a tiny two-year-old was at the doorway of the living room, dragging a baby blanket behind him. 

Five-year-old Thor rushed forward to hug toddler Loki. Loki's trembling lip immediately stilled at his brother's embrace, and his round face broke into an ecstatic grin. Frigga laughed in the background.

"Hello, baby," Frigga sang.

"Mine!" Thor said. 

Thor rested his chin on top of Loki’s head. He was already tall for his age, and Loki so small. His arms were wrapped around Loki, refusing to let him go. 

"Now, now," said Frigga. "Loki isn’t a toy to have, Thor."

"Mine," Thor said. Loki giggled, clinging to Thor as he tried to steady his own wobbling feet. "Mine, Loki is mine." 

"Loki, are you Thor’s?" said Frigga.

Loki nodded, giggling. 

"I  _told_  you,” Thor said. “He’s my Loki.”

"He’s yours," said Frigga. "Always."

"Always," said Thor, and Loki laughed the whole time, not truly understanding. 

Jane’s heart hurt. They had loved each other so, so much. 

She remembered how sickly Loki looked the last time she saw him.

Loki had been so loved, and now Thor was gone. 

She still did not sleep in her own bedroom. She wondered if Loki too lay on the ground, sleepless, dreamless, trying not to picture if Thor cried out at the first blow, trying not to question what was the last thing on Thor’s mind before he died. 

She wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

She turned off the television and drew her knees to her chest. She wished Christmas wouldn’t come. She had planned Thor’s Christmas present since September. Now she had no one to give it to. 

Loki came for two Christmases with their family once. It didn’t necessarily end well, or begin well for that matter, and sometimes the middle was not very good either. But he was there nonetheless, and Thor would try to soften him with eggnog, and his booming laugh.

Jane was celebrating Christmas with Erik. She wondered if Loki was going back to his parents, if with anyone at all. 

She hadn’t spoken to him since that outburst in the cemetery. She wondered if he had gotten any healthier since. 

He had been so _loved_.

(“He’s my Loki,” Thor had said)

Was he anyone’s anything now? 

Jane suddenly found herself reaching for her mobile. Searching for Loki’s number. She knew this was only going to end in her frustration, her pain, her everything—but she couldn’t give up on him, not truly. Even if he hurt her, she couldn’t forget about him, because she didn’t care for anyone because they earned it. She cared because they needed it—and Loki needed  _something_. 

The phone rang. She held her breath. Prayed that she would not cry. 

Rang.

Rang.

She closed her eyes. In her head, she could still hear Thor’s deep voice, saying,  _It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay._

Loki answered the phone, and she caught her breath.

"Hi, Loki?" she said. "It’s Jane. Don't hang up, please. Let’s have coffee."

-

Loki looked like he was wasting away, and if it weren’t for that cup of espresso before him that he still wasn’t touching he would have evaporated from existence. She wondered if anyone gave Loki any comfort food after the funeral, casserole dishes and meat pies to get by the endless weeks where she couldn’t bring herself to cook or even eat. Maybe he didn’t eat a single bite this whole time, because he was so tired. 

Jane pretended to be too distracted with stirring the cream into the coffee to talk to him. It still jarred her that he agreed to come at all, to her home, even though she could tell by the way he sat stiffly on the kitchen chair that he hated it, hated this place that Thor called home and Loki called foreign.  

There was the clink of spoons on coffee mugs, and the whirring of the coffee machine on the kitchen counter, trying to fill the silence between them. 

"How’s your espresso?" she said, even though she knew he didn’t try it.

"Mm," he said. 

She cupped her mug of tea with her hands. It was thickly warm in the house, with the heating turned on to maximum capacity, but Loki still wore his scarf and probably-Thor’s gloves. He looked as if the snow outside infused into his skin, washing out all color except in his dark green eyes and crow back hair. 

She saw how snow encrusted the bottom of his shoes. It was melting, dripping on the kitchen floor. 

"Did you walk all the way here?" said Jane.

Loki made a noncommittal noise. 

"Loki, it’s snowing and below freezing," said Jane. 

"I’m a little more resilient than you are," he said.

He looked like she could knock him over just by poking him, and she was half his height. 

"You’re going to catch your death," she said. "How many miles was it?"

"Only three," said Loki.

"That’s still far for walking," she said.

He shrugged. 

"Is your car broken down or something?" said Jane.

"No," he said. "Don’t bother babying me, Jane. I’m certainly not your responsibility."

She stared down at her tea. 

"Listen," she said.

When she hesitated and bit her lip, Loki raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m listening.”

"The last time we talked—I said some really harsh things," said Jane. 

"Which things?" said Loki.

"Don’t make me repeat them," said Jane. "I know you remember." 

The corner of Loki’s lips twitched. 

"I just wanted to say that I’m sorry," said Jane. "I was harsh to you, and I’m sorry."

"Don’t be," Loki said, lifting the espresso to his lips. "I prefer honesty."

"I wasn’t being honest," said Jane. "I was being vindictive."

"What’s the difference?"

"It means I’m taking you out for coffee," said Jane. "And I’m apologizing right now, because I didn’t mean what I said, that I valued you only because you were Thor’s brother. That isn’t true at all."

"You know, I really don’t care if that really was the truth," Loki said, looking out the window. 

"Well, it isn’t," said Jane. "So take it how you will, but I’ll show you."

Loki’s lips barely brushed his coffee before he set it down. 

"It’s no wonder Thor married you," said Loki. 

"What do you mean?" said Jane.

"You love like him," he said.

His voice was as bitter as his black coffee. 

"How’ve you been?" she said.

"It's cold," he said.

"Do you want me to turn up the heat?" she said.

She waited for him to answer. He didn’t say anything else, only took a sip of his coffee. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all.

"Are you…" Jane gave a small hum before continuing. "Do you have Christmas plans?"

"I’ll be with my parents," Loki said. "I suppose."

"Ah," she said. "That’ll be—" Fun wasn’t the right word, neither was ‘nice.’ "That’ll be good."

He snorted softly. 

"Just so long as you don’t walk there," she said.

"Very funny," said Loki. 

"I'm serious. It’s dangerous in this weather," said Jane. "And especially when the sun sets earlier in winter—it’s almost always dark. I don’t know  _why_  you insist on doing it lately, but—”

"Last I checked, I am twenty-five, not five," said Loki. "I don’t need anyone’s permission to cross the road, much less walk alongside it." 

"You probably have to cross the highway to get anywhere—"

"The highway is far from being the most dangerous of places to cross." 

"I highly doubt it."

"I  _didn’t_  cross the highway, thank you. I took the detour through the park.”

She couldn’t imagine even taking a step in that place anymore without shaking.

"You could get hypothermia," Jane said. "Or get run over, or—or robbed or—"

"What do you expect to happen?" said Loki. "I get stuck in a blizzard? A serial killer axes me from behind?" 

Jane felt a stone in her chest. She knew Loki felt it too, because he suddenly paled at the taste of his own poison. That stone in her chest spread to every part of her body, and she was frozen in place, cold, and numb. 

(It had been two months since she last felt Thor’s touch)

Loki set down his espresso and looked away. He fumbled to pull off his gloves, as if to distract himself. His hands were skeletal. 

"He should have been more careful," Loki said under his breath. He tugged at his other glove. It fell off easily. "He shouldn’t have been so—"

"How’s work?" Jane said, loudly, because she didn’t want to talk about this right now. Not about Thor, not with Loki, not here, not now.

Loki shook his head. 

"Nothing special," said Loki.

“You’re in uh, you’re in business, aren’t you?” said Jane, because she could feel Loki evading that safe smokescreen, trying to dodge his way back to Thor, back to that pit in her stomach. “That really big one—Stark Industries or something—”

“Tell me something.”

Jane swallowed hard. Loki’s jaw was tense. He stared at her in the same way a soldier, disarmed and downed, would stare at a bullet that would end his life. Waiting for the inevitable end, and fearing it all the same.

Or maybe that was just her, because she suddenly felt so cornered she was sinking into the walls.

"What?" said Jane.

"When Thor left that day—that morning, did he say goodbye to you?" said Loki. "How did he say goodbye to you?"

Jane closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Her mouth felt dry.

"Loki, I don’t really want to talk about this," she said.

"I need to know," said Loki. His voice was strained. "Did he kiss you goodbye? Did he make you—did he make you smile?"

"Loki, please," Jane said.

She felt the lump rising in her throat and she wondered if this was Loki’s twisted way of hurting her again, of making her feel terrible, except his face was becoming gray and she could see him shake inside the heavy coat. 

"Was he happy when he last left you?" said Loki. "I swear—if he—was he happy? Was he—?"

He stopped himself and closed his eyes, shoulders shaking.

Jane didn’t know if she should reach out to touch him. She was afraid of breaking him if she tried. 

"I don’t understand," Jane said, her voice hushed.

"The reason why he was coming home late was because of me," said Loki.

Jane said nothing. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Loki stared at her, eyes drilling into her, demanding something silently of her that she could not give.

"He said he was having dinner with someone," said Loki. "He was at my home. And we fought." 

Jane felt as if each of Loki’s words was a shovel hollowing her one bit at a time. But in truth, it didn’t feel like herself being emptied, but with each word she was understanding Loki more and more, and the pain he was carrying, and exactly how he felt when he wore down these past few months, like a mountain reduced to rubble.

"We argued about something idiotic," Loki said, and the more he spoke the more his voice shook. "It might have been about you. Might have been about us. We argued and he said he just needed to go home, go home before we started screaming at each other—"

He took a shuddering breath. His voice trembled. Everything about him trembled when Thor fell. As if Thor caused his world to shake, and with quaking came a split, a break, a chasm—a crumble.

"I was angry, but—I told him to take a short cut home," Loki said. He was barely moving his lips. "Told him to cut through the park, because I thought he would be so—damn—angry he wouldn’t notice if a semi was coming his way down the highway. Told him to don’t be an arse, don’t be stupid, go through the park if he had to run off like that—"

He closed his eyes—he was growing several shades paler, if that was even possible. Jane wanted to say something, move, anything—but she couldn’t.

When he opened them again, Jane realized she was holding her breath. Waiting for it all to crash down on her.

"Thank you for the coffee," Loki said.

He pushed aside the cup of espresso he barely touched, and pushed his chair away from the table. Jane wanted to follow him as he crossed through the living room, rushed out of her house with a slamming door, but she was paralyzed, and if she a took too big of a breath she was going to shatter her lungs. 

For a moment, she thought she hated Loki.

Maybe Thor would be sitting across from her, gulping that coffee down and smiling and speaking and  _breathing_. Maybe he would kiss her forehead and tell her about his day and  _be with her,_  except he wasn’t because he got in a fight with his brother and took a detour through the park and someone wanted his wallet so they killed him for it. 

But Thor was dead, and gone, and Loki didn't stop shaking, and he left his (probably-Thor’s) gloves at her table. 

She should run and catch him, ask to give him a ride, give him back the gloves (tell him that she didn’t blame him, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his fault, don’t blame yourself please, _it wasn’t your fault_ —), but she couldn’t move anymore. Her bones were hollow; if she stood up, she’d crack like mosaic and crumble into dust. 

-

It was Thor’s cell phone.

Jane stared at it. It must have fallen through the crack between the bed and the nightstand; the last day Thor left he had been rushing around the bedroom searching for his mobile before work before hurrying out of the door without it when he was running late. She wondered if it would have made a difference if he found it.

She ran her thumb over the rugged cracks along the screen, from when Thor dropped the phone on asphalt the third day after he bought it. She wondered why she never thought of looking under the bed before. There were no monsters underneath, after all, and if they did, there was little she was more afraid of anymore.

Jane sat on the edge of her stiff bed, turning the phone over in her hand. It had been four months since Thor passed. His phone had long run out of battery by now. The screen was speckled with dust falling through the cracks.

She wondered what photos he saved on his phone. What events he documented, what texts he sent, the last phone call he made from it. If he was still alive, people would call her paranoid, possessive, unreasonable. Now that he was dead, it hardly mattered to anyone else but her.

Before she had a chance to hesitate, Jane stood up from the bed and scrounged for the charger. She plugged it into the wall and then connected it to Thor’s mobile. The screen sleepily lighted up again for the first time in months, with a thin red strip of the charging battery.

She let it sit for five minutes before she checked it again. The phone finally turned on, the home screen underneath the web of cracks. There were several text messages that piled into the inbox the moment the phone had been brought back to life, several of them from old friends trying to keep some form of familiarity with a dead man, or the phone company reminding him of an upcoming bill.

She read them anyway. Whatever this phone was now, it was a wailing wall first and foremost. They made her smile, the messages, because she realized how much people loved Thor, how many people Thor loved, and she couldn’t help but think _that’s my Thor,_ even though it did hurt.

There were several missed calls as well. Curious, she checked Thor’s calling history. Some of them were unknown numbers—wrong numbers, perhaps. About four from the occasional old friend. One from the dentist.

And six from Loki.

Jane’s hand tensed.

They were spaced out by several weeks. One three weeks after Thor’s funeral. One on the day that Thor’s murderer was arrested—when she saw him at the cemetery. Another just a day afterward. And on, and on, and—

One two hours ago.

She wondered if he called just to listen to Thor’s voice mail. To hear Thor’s voice.

There was a voice message from the most recent call.

She couldn’t stop herself from pressing to listen, and holding the phone to her ear. She knew that Loki would kill her if he knew, if he wasn’t already upset enough with her to not do so earlier.

_You have one new voice message—_

She waited with bated breath. There was static on the other end. Nothing but static at first, and she wondered if he had accidentally dialed Thor’s number without knowing, or if he sat alone in silence, with a phone at his ear, thinking, before he set the phone down without making a single sound.

Then she realized that it wasn’t static—it was ragged, heavy breathing.

“ _Thor_ ,” Loki’s voice said.

It sounded so choked, so strangled as if he was drowning. Jane couldn’t breathe just listening to it.

Loki let out a choked gasp. She had never heard him so vulnerable before, and she felt her eyes burn just at the sound of it.

“ _Thor, I’m so sorry_ ,” Loki said. He breathed through clenched teeth, as if he was shot and in pain and these were his last words. “ _I tried. I tried and I’m so sorry and—Thor—”_

She heard Loki stop to catch his breath, as if he was running for his life. Coldness spread from the back of her neck outward, until she froze.

“ _I can’t do it anymore,”_ Loki said. Jane wanted to say stop, no, please, but Loki wouldn’t hear her. “ _I can’t—I’m sorry, Thor. I—_ ”

Loki choked on his words for ten seconds, but in those ten seconds Jane had already ran out the bedroom, shoved on her red rain boots, and flew out of the front door.

-

Jane ran through the park between her home and Loki’s. She did not stop to realize it.

-

Loki’s apartment complex was only three miles away. Jane never realized how very close he lived to her. It really would have been a safe walk for Thor, on any other day. It was only three miles.

By the time she reached the doorstep, her left sock was riding down from the boot and her hair tangled itself in the cold March wind. Despite nearing spring, there was still thick sleet on the ground, and her teeth chattered when she remembered she still was alive and had a body that just sprinted here in twenty minutes.

She couldn’t remember Loki’s apartment number. She had to gasp for help to the doorman, ask if Loki left his flat at all today, if he went out, if he had any intentions of leaving and never coming back. The doorman told her the apartment number and that no, Loki hadn’t left, and in fact he hadn’t left his flat for nearly a week, not even for work.

Jane ran up the stairs, her heart hurting with every heavy beat. She should have tried calling his phone, tried to reach him immediately, and save herself the trouble of running and running and running and not knowing if she’ll find a body swinging from a rope or a slit wrists in a hot tub at the finish line.

But she never did. She needed to _see_ him.

She raced down the hallway of the seventh floor, nearly throwing herself against the door. She banged her fist against the door, trying to catch her breath, trying not to break it down because by God, she would break down the door, she _would_.

Jane felt her hands bruise. She only hit harder against the door.

“Loki,” she whispered, like a prayer. She raised her voice; she swore she would not let it shake. “Loki!”

There wasn’t an answer. She tried not to let out a sob as she clapped a hand over her lips. For all she knew, the time it took for her to run up the stairs was enough time for him to leap out the window, or swallow too many pills, or shoot himself in the head because _Thor I’m sorry I can’t do it anymore I tried I’m sorry Thor I’m so sorry—_

“ _Loki!_ ” Jane screamed.

The door jerked. She let out a cry and made to push the door further open, but it didn’t budge further than an inch. She held her breath, not sure whether she had permission to be relieved. The door chain lock kept the door stubbornly barely open.

She pressed herself against the crack, trying to search for Loki. She could see the barest edge of him, just from the corner of her gaze.

“Loki,” she breathed. “Are you there?”

Loki said nothing. She could see that he was shaking.

“Let me in,” she said. She swallowed hard, and tried not to be afraid, because Loki was _alive_ and safe for now and there was nothing to worry about, not now, and that was more than anyone could say. “Please.”

“Why are you here?” Loki said.

His voice was so quiet. It did not shake, like it did when it tried to talk to a ghost mere hours ago. It sounded so very tired.

“I—” Jane wiped her lips with the back of her hand. She still breathed heavily after running for his life, and the snow made her steps slip. “I needed to see you.”

Loki let out a breath. His back was against the door, and he probably would have shut it if she was not pressing hard against it, trying to reach him. She could see his hand from here, and she thought if she could just reach her hand through the crack, she could take it, even if he may try to snap her fingers.

“You called Thor’s number,” Jane said. Her voice was small. She could see Loki tense up. “You called him and I—I—”

“That wasn’t meant for you,” said Loki.

“Loki, are you okay?” she said.

The Loki she knew would have laughed, perhaps derisively. Loki now said nothing. She thought she could feel him shake through the door.

“Please let me in,” she said. She rested her forehead against the door, trying to keep her voice from breaking.

“Go away,” Loki croaked.

Jane shook her head, even though he couldn’t see. She closed her eyes, trying to feel Loki on the other side of the door. If she sank deeper, maybe she could touch him, feel him, feel all that which was bottling inside his chest and weighed him down until he drowned, just so she could bring him back up again.

“I’m not leaving you alone,” she said. “Not again.”

“What the hell do you think you can do?” Loki said. He raised his voice, but he didn’t scare her anymore. His brokenness broke her. “What do you want?”

“I want—” Jane’s voice cracked and she tried again. “I want you to be all right.”

“What for?” Loki said. “You want to save me, Jane?”

Jane could hardly breathe with the lump in her throat.

“You can’t,” said Loki. It sounded painful to say. “You can’t. I’m not like Thor. You can’t take me away and change me and make me forget everyone and everything, you can’t replace _anyone_ in my life, you can’t—”

(“Not my two favorite people,” Thor said, eyes rimmed with tears for the sadness that the ones he cared for the most harbored in themselves, and oh, how he loved them so)

“And now he’s gone,” Loki said. His voice was muffled—he must have put a hand over his mouth. “Now he’s gone and he won’t be back and you took him and I pushed him out that door, pushed him _away_ —”

“That’s not true,” Jane said. She pressed her cheek against the door. “Loki, none of that is true.”

“Leave,” Loki said.

“I don’t want you to be hurting,” Jane said. She could feel Loki pressing against the door, trying to lock her out, shut her away. “I don’t want you to blame yourself, I don’t want you to _die_ , Loki—”

“I said _leave_ ,” he said, and the voice that once sent Jane scurrying was now rooting her to the spot, because all that barbed wire and coarseness that once covered it was breaking away to reveal raw, bleeding, pain. “I don’t need you, don’t want you here, so just _go_.”

“I’m not going away,” said Jane. “I want you to let me in.”

“Why the hell would I want you here?” Loki said. “Why would I want anyone here?”

“Because you need someone,” Jane whispered. “And you know it.”

“I had called Thor’s phone,” Loki said, voice shaking. She couldn’t tell if it was rage.

“You were calling _for help_ ,” Jane said.

Loki was pressing his entire weight against the door; it was getting harder to keep the door open. Jane shoved the toe of her boots in the crack between the door and the frame. It hurt her toes.

“Loki,” she said.

“ _What?”_ Loki spat.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Jane said.

Loki’s fist drove against the door. She let out a small gasp but did not back away. She still kept her hands pressed against the door, forcing it to stay open.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said again, with more strength.

“I yelled at him,” Loki said. He was almost whispering. “I was angry at him, I told him to go through the park—”

“Loki—”

“The last words I said to him _, I yelled them at him_.” Loki was breathing so raggedly, as if the pressure of everything on his heart was making him burst at the seams. “We were so angry at each other and—and I told him to go through the park and he did and—and—”

“He loves you, Loki,” Jane said.

Loki let out a yell. It sounded so torn, so in pain, that Jane choked on a sob. She reached a hand through the crack, trying to feel him, but she couldn’t touch him from here. She couldn’t even tell where he was on the opposite side.

“He loves you so much, Loki,” Jane said. “And he would have never blamed you, never wanted you to feel like this at all—”

And it hurt _her_ , hurt so much to see the person that Thor cared so much for be in so much pain because of his death. It hurt, because Loki was so broken and hiding in a shell that no one tried to crack, until he waited to die.

Loki said nothing. She knew that if he didn’t hate her before, out of sheer miracle, he did now. But she cared for him now more than before.

“Hey,” she said. Her words were but breaths. “Can you hear me?”

She could hear Loki breathing on the other end. She opened her eyes, staring at the ground, willing with all her heart that she could reach him even if she could not touch him.

“I know you can,” she said. “Talk with me.”

Loki let out a shuddering gasp. Jane curled her fingers around the doorway.

“Listen,” she said. She took a breath and wetted her lips. “Let me in, please. I want to help you. I want you to heal.”

Loki’s breathing was shallow. She wondered if he was crying, or if he even shed a tear this entire time, if he bottled up everything so tightly that not even a single drop could leak from the cork.

She pressed against the door. She could feel him slide down to the ground. He may be hiding his face in his hands, but she couldn’t see. She raised her hand to the door chain lock.

“I can break this door down right now,” she said. “I could shake you by the shoulders and _scream_ at you until you hear me out. But you won’t listen to me. You won’t believe a single word I say unless you open this door yourself. So please, Loki—please let me in.”

 _Please want to let me in_.

She waited, holding her breath. A puddle was forming at her feet where the snow was melting from her boots. She wondered if she was melting as well, waiting for him. She wanted to listen to him, talk with him, grieve with him, _anything_ , and prayed that he felt the same.

Slowly, surely, the chain fell and the door gave way. Jane swallowed hard and pushed open the door. Loki had gotten off the floor and walked away, as if sleepwalking. Jane stepped into his apartment with no idea what she wanted to do next, to put all that care that she wanted to voice into actual action.

The flat was so cold and empty, as if no one really lived in it and Loki was only a ghost haunting its corners.

Loki took one step, two, away from the door, before he sank to the ground.

Jane immediately caught him and lowered herself to her knees, holding Loki as he shook. He had no strength to even keep himself upright as she held him, trying so hard not to cry.

Jane closed her eyes, rubbing his quaking back. She had felt how thin he was, had seen the scars under his sleeve, and it broke her heart.

“It’s okay to cry, Loki,” Jane said. Her eyes and nose stung; if she opened her eyes, the tears would not stop falling. “It hurts, and you miss him. I miss him too. He loves you so much, Loki, he always has and he always will and it’s okay to grieve, you’re _safe_ and _loved_.”

Loki let out a choked, broken wail, his shaking hands digging into her back. She could feel all his pain flowing from inside his breaking heart, and she cried with him. Because Thor was dead—his brother, her husband, their best friend, was gone and the world didn’t stop for them to take a breath.

 But they were here now, in each other’s arms, and they were taking a breath.

“We’ll be okay,” she said in Loki’s ear. She held him tight, so tightly that she felt warm. She hoped he felt that too. “We’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

Their tears were hot in their eyes. They could melt the snow outside if they tried.

-

They were just leaving the park after a Sunday walk in mid-autumn. Thor was recalling a joke that Steve had told him at work this afternoon, and she laughed because he was so _bad_ at repeating the joke but so good at making her happy.

There were several cars ahead of them on the road that were pulled over to the side. Jane tried to stand on her toes to see what was ahead, if there was traffic, or a motor accident that blocked them from moving. Thor craned his neck as well, frowning. She held his hand tight, her mittens against his gloves.

“What’s going on?” she said.

Thor nodded forward. Ahead of them, a line of black cars was slowly making its way down the left lane. They were so slow that it reminded Jane for some reason of chains, linked together and dragged along, painful and burdening.

They halted in their steps and stood silently as they watched the funeral procession pass them by. Jane tried to catch a glimpse of any faces through the black tinted windows. When she thought she saw a face, the window had long passed and she wondered if she had only seen her own reflection against the glass.

“That’s so sad,” she said.

Thor nodded. When the line of mourners passed, the other cars that pulled aside peeled off the edge of the road and trudged forward, with some contagious slowness that trudged along in somber silence. Soon, they continued their pace as well, walking as quietly as they could so that their boots would not scrape the sidewalk.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a funeral before,” Thor said.

“You wouldn’t want to anytime soon,” Jane said. She still remembered the exact details of her parents’ funerals. She hoped that by the next funeral she ever had to attend, it would fade from her memory. She thought of how that funeral procession would stop by the cemetery, and that another plot of ground would be added to the collection, pockmarks of upturned soil that never left. “Graves are the scars of the earth.”

Thor pursed his lip. “You think so?” he said.

“Well, yes,” she said.

Thor walked in thoughtful silence. He was always someone who thought as he spoke, but he bowed his head in thought as they walked through the small town.

“Hey,” he said. “Have I ever told you how Loki and I once tried to adopt a pet fox?”

“Tried?” said Jane.

“Unofficially adopt,” Thor said with a wry smile. “In the woods back in our childhood home, we found a little kit. We must have been—I don’t know—ten. Seven and ten years old.”

“I don’t think you told me this,” said Jane.

“I probably didn’t,” said Thor with a laugh. “Well, we wanted to take care of it, because we couldn’t find its mother, and it was just a baby. So we did. We tried feeding it bread, and leftovers from the fridge when Mum wasn’t looking. Played fetch with it, or at least tried to. We even named it.”

“What was its name?” said Jane.

“Kitten,” said Thor. “Loki’s idea, not mine.”

He rested his fingers against his lips in thought.

“Long story short,” said Thor, “the kit died. We grew close to it and everything, but then it got sick and died. Loki cried for days. We decided to bury it in the field, which was behind the woods. I dug up a little hole for it with a shovel, and we buried it wrapped in an old blanket. Covered it up, and moved on.”

“Okay,” said Jane.

“And—it’s a little strange,” said Thor. “I can’t compare a fox to a lot of things, but—later on, after I graduated and about to go to college, Loki and I were just walking through the field again, just reminiscing. And then we somehow got on the topic of Kitten the fox and thought we should try to find his grave again. He was a good memory, after all. And we looked around the field. We looked everywhere. We never found it.”

“Didn’t remember where it was?” said Jane.

“Oh no, we remembered,” said Thor. “Remember, Loki cried for a week over that damn little fox. He’s not about to forget about it even if he got over it. We knew where it was, but we never found it. We were expecting to look for a lump of dirt in the ground. A mound. Something. But I guess we forgot that even from the dirt of a grave mound, new grass could grow. It was covered up.”

He turned to face her. His face was shining, earnest, pure.

“So I guess,” said Thor, “that scars heal in time, too. It’s kind of sad and beautiful, that no matter what life goes on.”

Jane reached over and put her hand on his. She felt every callous, every vein. She grazed her thumb over the knuckles.

“Are you cold?” said Thor. “Let’s have coffee.” 


End file.
